Ray, what I like about your postings is that they make us think differently. We have try to take a different view of the world in discussions with you and that isn't easy. It's a view I encountered in working with Indians in northern Canada. They simply didn't see things the way we do. We may not like it, but like you, many of them viewed the economy we imposed on them as a cancer. In Canada and the rest of the Americas our economic system has converted societies that fended for themselves as farmers or hunter-gatherers into indigent rural and urban (e.g. Winnipeg) slum dwellers. We see our economy as providing for us and driving our lives; they know it as something that has obliterated them.
There are also less onerous things I like about your postings. As an artist, you keep reminding us of the place of the arts in civilization. And at times you take us well off the beaten path, like when you remind us that "It's a serious question whether the world really exists or whether we just dream it and we are the dream together." Well yes Ray, perhaps that is where we are. And perhaps we should start thinking that way, at least a little. So do keep posting. All the best, Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: Ray Harrell To: Ed Weick ; Ed Davey ; Darryl or Natalia ; Gail Stewart ; Robert Stennett ; Michael Gurstein ; Mike Spencer ; Selma Singer ; Sandwichman Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2010 8:41 AM Subject: FW: [Futurework] Epigenesis -- was Indian prejudice [Off list] Hello folks, I posted both of these but they did not get on, this grew out of Gail's question. If you don't want it just delete, REH If Canada is going to find their way through the various cultural "paradigms" that each immigrant group represents, isn't it important that you learn to talk to and live with the group that is oldest with you and has been here the longest? We are easy. If you can't deal with us, how can you hope to deal with the tough Chinese as they come? I admit that there are differences, that all life is local, and my lessons are local to my teachers, family and community. Others will build their houses slightly differently but traditional people generally are more "touched by the world" than "touching the world." We then take that information, meditate on it and create the world individually and together. More about that later. Thank you Gail for the compliment in your post, I will try to deserve it. I can't speak for other Indians but I can confront your question from what I have been taught by my teachers and my culture and family. You asked a couple of serious questions which I will answer as I'm able. How can the future of work be determined if there are such incredible differences in what that means between immigrant and First Nations groups? How can there not be an Indian economics? Is there a concept of work amongst Indians and what is its purpose and intent? Anyone who knows Indians well know that we are continually busy and enjoy it. When that gets frustrated as the children grow, too often take the way out by drugs and suicide. Reset the button. Start over again. Let me start this off with Gail's question about the meaning of economics to a traditional community. For many Indian People the western concept of Economics, as a core value of the system of culture, is best signified as a cancer growing on the society that devours the meaningful areas of life for its own purposes. Cherokees like rocks. Crystals are important sources of information for us. From the telestial "mineral" world of the crystals we would say that economics is "epigenetic" on the body of culture. (tip my hat to Keith for the word) Economists would call economics and trade, the "engine." We do not. We always had plenty of trade and we loved a good market but we call the will to grow (learn) and live, the engine and energy that feeds the system of life. The natural world is our bible and the systems of the natural world gives us our identity as people through relationship. We are concerned with the "Way of Right Relationships." Through relationship we all evolve the world together from the information sent to us and recognized by us through the senses. That's why advanced virtuosic perceptivity and the human instrument is such a high value for us. The purpose of work is the evolution of competency or individual personal virtuosity. We say we have always been here because the spirit is eternal and belongs to the cosmos, the Great Mystery. We have always been here! Economics to eternality is irrelevant. To destroy the world, which is the garden where we learn, our schoolroom, for the sake of terrestrial temporality is pathological. To make a world conceived in beauty in the minds of millions of spirits meditating on creation into a thing of ugliness is..sick. The best metaphor is a "cancer" turned against the consciousness that gives it life. Perhaps this maybe the reason the Chief told Gail that he didn't have economics he had life. With us, we like things in fours. Morning, noon, evening, night. Spring, summer, autumn, winter. childhood, adolescence, maturity, old age, etc. We say there are four primary choices in life. You choose your god, (your core value), your mate (the value of relationship and family), your work (the development of your competency) and your play (the following of the ways of creativity. English says it "re-creation.") The world is dreamed by the Creator, maintained by the spirits including us, and is the classroom where we learn why we decided to be born in the first place. We say, "why we jumped down." Instead of trading in order to live more full and comprehensive lives for the purposes outlined above, the West seems involved in trade as a virtuosic art form for its own sake. Instead of work as the effort expended fulfilling the promise of individual wisdom and growth, it is turned to simple sustenance and the meaning of life becomes simple gathering and ownership. Making that an Art is a waste of both Art and personhood in our way of looking at "person." We call that ayvwiyah or "real personhood." The only safe use of such a discipline, as the virtuosic Arts, is found in: · the abstract arts which develops the human perceptual instrument. · the art of education which develops the children, · the art of healing which rebalances the psycho-physical dysfunction of individuals and · the Art of Spirituality which gives us a pursuit of the ultimate meanings of existence. When anything else becomes an Art it is dangerous. The Art of war for example. · Peace should be an Art for it is the positive process of life but war should never be. · War as an artistic process is the process of an ever evolving death. So what is the dialogue that we have with Islam around the concept of Jihad? How about Komm, süsser Tod of the Christians? Words mean something. Words lead to facts. Facts are mutual agreements. The world is created with dialogue and mutual agreements. Many of your Indian neighbors will not even think of the world as "out there." I don't. We create the world from the material sent by the Infinite to our limited perceptual instrument and negotiate its meaning with each other through words and thought. The rule of law. The "world" is us plus implications of us. (Note that I did not say that we were the "Universe." The "world" is human. Every species has a different "world" or as we say "Medicine." To the bee the "Medicine" is, to our best understanding Octagonal.) Agreements come and go and science changes as people live and die. The world doesn't stay the same. It's a serious question whether the world really exists or whether we just dream it and we are the dream together. Artists in the west understand the rules. Thoughts have power in the arts. Works of art have their life and consciousness and even desires. Cause and effect is supreme. A conductor begins by asking what the piece wants us to know. The sculptor "listens" to the stone. What did Van Gogh "see?" Art demands total commitment. Buber said rightfully I think, that once you choose an Art, everything is sacrificed on the altar of that art for the purpose of the fulfillment of the values of it. (its "Medicine") So when Hitler sought the Art of blood lineage his ultimate end was what we all shared as a result of making one's genes a work of Art with its sister Archeology. Together they were the demon twins and murdered millions but they weren't the first. But this is not about that. It's about the principle of the function of Art and its purpose in the human psyche and society. Particularly since the modern economists even use the term the "Art of Money" when they speak of the purity of their quest. The Art of the invisible hand of the marketplace, like the windigos in the woods, has no place for the individual of any species. And yet every spirit in every species is special, eternal and has purpose to the Infinite Mind, what we call the Grandfather/Grandmother. Art is pure process and the sole purpose is the evolution of the virtuosity of the Artist (the values) in the medium that the process is being used.. Because it is a human process it cares little for the spirit and is solely concerned with its perfection and evolution. Such Arts are the roots of humans sacrificed and that has happened in this place before. Today the wealthy dream the sacrifice of the unemployed. The entities of human sacrifice still circle this continent and both hemispheres. I suspect an Aztec reborn in Europe would be called an Artist as would an Inka. Machu Picchu is an amazing immense stone sculpture the second largest in the history of the world. It mattered not that the empire disappeared in a little more than one century. It's a whole mountain thousands of feet high sculpted as a living being, but the largest is in Columbia where the mountain is so high that it catches all of the growing levels of altitude on the planet in one immense Sculpture Garden. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0410/feature3/index.html Very few people even know it exists. It is a supreme work of agriculture and urban planning as an Art form but even these great Artists sacrificed their defense against the Spanish for the sake of completing their art work. Alas, Art is a bad model for the human life. You should do your Art to live not live to do your Art. Art is a biological evolutionary tool of life, not a purpose. The Art of America is Economics. You should be very afraid. I am. But the world is changing. The classroom is evolving and it presents another challenge. The challenge for us to cooperate and live or die alone and be recycled like trash. Thank you Gail, Natalia, Ed and everyone. Hope this was not too strange for you. REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Arthur Cordell Sent: Monday, November 29, 2010 9:41 PM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION'; 'Keith Hudson' Subject: Re: [Futurework] Epigenesis -- was Indian prejudice I would only like to add that the whole meaning of celebrating multi culturalism and celebrating diversity is the recognition of difference. Different cultures. Different racial groupings. Someday the world will be color blind. How that will happen I really don't know but I hold it as an article of faith. We have to go on knowing that people have discriminated and will do so again in the future. Stupid jokes and insensitivity will happen. As Goldwater said "we can't legislate morality". But an enlightened society can and will deal with those who promote hate or those who cause harm to others just because they are different in some way: race, gender, sexual preferences, etc. This much is different from the past that you experienced. So Never Again applies to more than one racial grouping or religion it can and should apply to all groupings. Arthur From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Arthur Cordell Sent: Monday, November 29, 2010 6:12 PM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION'; 'Keith Hudson' Subject: Re: [Futurework] Epigenesis -- was Indian prejudice Ray, at some level we are all racists, by this I mean sensitive to the differences we encounter when we go outside our usual communities. And yes there is stereotyping. I think that the tendency to stereotype goes hand in hand with our tendency to look for patterns just about everywhere. Ray I know that your people have suffered and you have written eloquently about that situation. We are not going to change human nature anytime soon. And shedding tears over what has happened is not going to change the past. (this applies to the whole human catastrophe, including the Holocaust) Arthur
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